The Knight Of The Rose (48 page)

coma. It h ad been a sh ock to my ne rves when I fe lt the sting of the frost on that first day they

brought me home. It’s not so bad now. I actually like it—more than I once liked the autumn.

“Hey? Good morning. I di dn’t know you we re awake,” Mike chimed, leaning on my

doorframe.

So, being awake is some miracle. Obviously, three weeks of being alive isn’t enough for

him to feel normal.

He looked a little more rested today; his hair was still wet from a shower, and the smell of

his fresh, powder-scented cologne filled my room.

“Yeah, hi. I’ve just been…doing some thinking.” I sat up in my bed.

“What about?” Mike dropped his folded arms and moved to sit beside me.

“Just stuff.”

“Ara—” He paused, seemingly assessing his words. “I love you. And—I’m your best friend.

I always will be. But I’m not stup id, and I’m not blind. ” He opened his eyes a little wider, then

focused on my face.

There’s only one di rection this could be going ; he must have pieced it all together, as I

feared. I looked away from him and braced myself for his fury. Everything that happened; being

kidnapped and nearly murdered by J ason was all my fault—he’d be right to yell at me; I let a

vampire into my world, and it nearly cost me my life—and his.

“Hey? Don’t do that.” He rolled my face upward with his fingertip. “Please don’t turn away

from me, Ara. I just want to see you happy again. I want that mor e than I can express. I just—I

wanted you to know that—you’re not alone. Okay?” He stroked my hair once and pressed his lips

together—studying my averted gaze. “Look. In t he hospital, I saw the way he loved you,” Mike

continued. “It was…undeniable. I…I don’t know what happened between you two, and maybe I

never will—but you need to know that, alt hough that part of your life is over now,
I’m
still here.

And you still have a chance to be happy.”

“I’m not sure I’m capable of that anymore, Mike.”

Mike nodded. “What if I could promise you you are? What if I could guarantee that you will

one day find a smile again? Would you believe me—at least start
wanting
to be happy again?”

“I—” I frowned to myself. “I do want to be happy.”

He went to shake his head, but stopped and exhaled. “Only you know the truth of that, Ar.

But I’m not giving up on you. Not ever. I don’t care what you say to me or do to make me mad or

hurt, I love you, and I’m not giving up on you.”

My eyes watered and my lips parted with elation. “What if I asked you to go?”

He didn’t even answer. We both already knew the answer. But he didn’t know the truth—he

was right, only
I
knew that. And the truth is, they all think I’m depressed and miserable because of

the attack, and while a part of that’s t rue, the core of it is because of David. But David’s gone. He’s

a part of my life I have to let go—I have no choice. And time, death and tears haven’t changed that,

and won’t change that.

David is never coming back for me. I just have to believe that he’s dead. Finality. Like Mum

and Harry. I grieve for them, and I can grieve for David. I shouldn’t wait for him to step around the

corner anymore.

I don’t want to let go, but it’s time to move on—be happy. Well,
try
to be happy.

I squeezed Mike’s hand and reached up to stroke my thumb over the thin bor der of stubble

following his jaw-line. “I like this.”

“Yeah? It was Emily’s suggestio n. She said I have the r ight jaw for it.” He gr inned and

rubbed his chin.

I chuckled. “You can always trus t her to give good fashion advice. When’s she coming to

see me again?”

“This afternoon.”

“How come they wouldn’t let her in at the hospita l,” I asked. “She said she came to see me,

but you had to sneak her in.”

“Yeah. They only allowed immediate family.”

“Then how did David—?”

“I lied. Told them I was your brother, and he was your fiancé.”

“You did that? For me? For him?”

“I know how much he means to you.” Mike sh

rugged. “It was…it ’s what you would’ve

wanted.” Mike lowered his head a little and looked away.

That must have hur t him—a lo t—when he realised the love David and I had t ogether. I

clasped his warm, squishy, human cheeks in my fingers and turned his face to mine; “You’re a good

man, Mike.” My head rocked from side to side. “I’m glad I’m marrying you.”

Mike’s frown softened and a br oad smile spread across his face, like the li ght touching the

earth at sunrise. “Then...you still wanna get married?”

“Of course I do, dummy.” I slapped his arm. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I just thought, with the whole near-death experience and all—you know, people change

from those things, Ara. I didn’t know if you’d want the same things anymore.”

“And you stayed? Even though you weren’t sure?” Admir ation crinkled across my nose.

Mike let everything he worked for in Australia fall apart to be here and make sure
I
got better—even

though he thought I didn’t want to marry him.

His eyes narrowed; “Ara. I’m in this for life. Whether you marry me or not, I will always be

here to love you and protect you and be your friend. That will never change. Never.”

How could it be that I’d missed this? All along, I’d been looking across the road to the boy I

thought I loved, when I should’ve been looking right beside me.
This
is my saviour, my true love—

this is my knight in shining armour. He always has and always will come to my rescue; he has never

left me in the dark. “Good,” I said. “Because I don’t want you to go
anywhere
.”

“Good, because I don’t plan to.”

I smiled and looked down at his big hand propping him up on t he bed beside me. “You are

right, though—about one thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Things do change. I
do
want different things now.” I grabbed his face again wi th both of

my hands and pulled him a little closer. “And I have never been more sure, in all of my existence,

that I want to spend the rest of my life with
you
, Mike.” I moistened my lips with my tongue and

took a deep breath. “I choose you—and I choose life. For forever.”

He leaned down, and his warm, velvet smile melted onto my lips as his breath brushed hot

against my skin. It was the first kiss. My first kiss, in my new life. I’d been given the chance to start

over—cleansed of all the mistakes of the past.

Today, I begin a new journey with the man I should’ve been with from the start.

The hourglass rocked and the balance had t ipped in r everse, but everything was back i n

place—just the way it was destined to be.

True love will be ours now, and happiness will be in every breath that I take beside this man.

We will go on—live, as living was intended, a nd I will love him for forever—for our forever—

because they’ve always been the same.

True love, by definiti on, means “someone that is truly loved”. But t rue love must be

reciprocated, or it is only excruciatingly unbearable and devastating—a never-ending lonely night in

an empty room.

By the dictionary of Ara, true l ove means you could not live wit hout that person. That the

love you feel for them is as honest and deep as the love they feel for you—a soul mate—a perfect

match. For me, that’s Mike. And in only a few hours, we’ll be sharing this truth with the rest of the

world. The presence of my hand over my belly was s upposed to settle the feeling of nerves—like

black bats had assembled in my gut and bludgeoned the ogre to death—but it didn’t. And it didn’t

hide the fact that, in truth, I wa sn’t ready for this. But Dad wouldn’t let me go back to P erth with

Mike unless we were married f irst. So, I stood in front of the full-length, oval mirror, with golden

light spreading its warm beams of morning over my empty bedroom floor, and let time pass around

me. Unable to control it or make good use of it. Just existing as a part of its greater plan.

I reached across and tilted the frame of the twisty-hinged mirror, changing the image to the

plain white of the roof. I couldn’t look at the reflection staring back at me tod ay; she was error,

beautified by justification, and painted in the form of a bright-eyed young girl. A young girl who

was doing what was expected of her, not what her heart truly wanted.

Don’t get me wr ong, I really do love Mike, and once we’re far away from this town, I’ll

forget David ever existed. But the quiet prelude to the tempest had me wondering if I was doing the

right thing. If marrying one man, when I was still in love with another, would perhaps destroy not

just my life, but Mike’s as well.

The blue light of the winter flashed behind my eyelids for a second as I visited the past—the

Christmas gone by where I spent the day on the armchair by the fire downstairs, talking to Mike on

the phone all day. It was cruel of his parent s to demand he return home for Christmas, and it did

them no good since we spent the entire week on the phone to each other anyway. The bill was huge,

but Mike just l aughed and said it was s mall change—a minor drawback in the greater scheme of

things—and covered the costs himself.

When he finally came back, I had never been so glad to see him in all my life. I’d had so

many nightmares while he was gone—one’s that ended in him calling to say he’d changed his mind

about me, or some where his plane crashed while I waited at the airport for him, and some where I

slipped into the darkness again, and he wasn’t here to save me.

I can’t live without him. I need him, almost as much as he needs me.

I shook my head a few tim es, releasing the shiver of memories past, and looked behind me

to the near-empty room. My bed was gone, and the spongy white ca rpet dominated the space. The

new day bed in the co rner had become a shelf for all things bridal, while the bouquets had been

lined up on the hallstand beside the window.

It might not have been my r oom anymore, but it still felt like my room, except, like me, it

had been changed beyond r ecognition. My face, my hands, everything had been polis hed and

shined, shaped and fashioned to look like the bride standing by the mirror in her wedding dress.

The swirling vortex of time had swept everything up, and I was next—destined to leave

everyone and everything behind. But that was always my destiny, wasn’t it? And one day soon, I’m

sure it will carry me away from Mike.

I smiled, looking down at the veil over the chair back beside me.

Then again, Mike would probably find a way to come back to me, just like he did after

Christmas—with a small surprise in a shoebox. I ran my fingers over the silk-stitched flowers on the

veil that was inside the box; the only piece of my mother that would be with me on my wedding

day. I thought it was lost—like ever ything my dad made me leave behind when he dragged me

away from my home, but Mike brought it back to me, and now, just like mum and I always planned,

I’ll wear the same veil she wore when she married my dad.

The familiar chatter of my little bluebird friend on the window formed the song to my empty

silence. I snapped from my reverie, tilted the mirror back down and watched the bird dancing in the

reflection; bouncing happily as if life just went on. So simple. That’s it; eat, sing, dance and play.

I wish I was a bluebird. I’d fly away—over the rainbow.

But life is not a novel, and people don’t really get happy endings. I understand all the

negative philosophical one-liners this town loves so much now. Th ey’re phrases invented by smart

people who know life isn’t made of dreams, even though it sometimes feels like a dream. But we’re

not the leading ladies of our own i llusory films. This is li fe, and I am real. At least, they tell me I

am, anyway. They tell me this is the real world. Time to grow up, Ara. Time to stop dreaming, Ara.

David said it best; “Even dreams eventually die.”

So I’m living a lie instead. Lying to my family, lying to Mike—making him believe I can be

normal. Time to be normal, Ara. I blinked, taking a deep breath, suffocating under the mas k that

slipped into place. “There, that’s bett er.” I smiled at my no rmal-self in the reflection; she smiled

back. “Everything is wonderful.” I must repeat this every day; “This is my lif e, and everything is

truly wonderful.”

I ran my fin gers over the yellow and silver embroidered cherry blos soms, flowing like a

swarm of butterflies over the fitted bodice of my white dress. My waist looked small, and my skin

was golden-brown, thanks to Emily forcing me to have a spray- on tan. She was ri ght, it did look

great. I looked healthy, li ke there was a kind of glow around me. I wasn’t totally sold on t he full

hoop skirt and l ong train, but it had been a s tipulation of Vicki’s that she get to help choose the

dress—without any arguments.

Despite my distaste in ostentatious imagery, I love my dress.

I love my ring—the one Mike designed for me when he was younger; the rose made of ruby,

with emerald-adorned gold vines. It rested safely back in place since the first day I woke from my

nightmare. Not that planning a wedding had been any less of a nightmare.

The white bouquets, embellished with a few pale-yellow roses filled the entire room with a

soft, fragrant perfume, but though th ey smelled sweet, they’d caused a lot of trouble. Vicki, of